LITTLETON — He’s big, he’s fast, he’s physical and his journey from a troubled background to a commitment to play running back at the University of Colorado is a storybook tale.

But the first question Littleton all-state running back Mister Jones gets after meeting someone new is almost never about his football exploits.

“Is that your real name?”

Jones laughs. It sure is. His full name is Mister Quincy Jones, in honor of the multiple Grammy winner.

Tasha Jones was 18 when she got pregnant with her first child. Like many young mothers, she didn’t know how much her life was about to change, especially after the father “wouldn’t claim him.”

Tasha did love the music of Quincy Jones, namely his sultry 1990 No. 1 hit single “The Secret Garden,” and wanted to name her newborn son Quincy, but grandma had a slightly different idea.

“She said he’s going to be a great kid, and he was going to make it through life even if his daddy wouldn’t claim him,” Tasha Jones said. “She wanted his daddy and everyone to see what they were missing. She wanted to give him a name to stand up because he changed the whole family when he was born.”

Jones is now preparing to make a name for himself on a bigger stage.

Blessed with eye-popping athletic ability, he stands 6-feet-2, weighs 210 pounds and runs the 40-yard dash in 4.55 seconds. He has rushed for 669 yards, averaging 7.7 yards per carry, and scored 13 touchdowns for the Class 4A Lions (6-1), who appear playoff-bound.

Jones considers his gifts a blessing, and he can’t wait to see where it will take him.

“Four years go fast,” he said. “I wanted to see myself have a good, healthy senior year.”

Home away from home

Tasha credits Mister, and her four other younger children, for keeping her away from the pull of the streets. She admits to living a “hard” life, scraping by and constantly on the move with her family, but she said she has always tried to teach her children life lessons, even if that painful example hit close to home.

She remembers standing in line at the welfare office and reminding Mister, then a young child, “this is what happens when you don’t have an education.”

While living in Oklahoma, Tasha had a special treat for Mister on his eighth birthday. She took him to visit her brother, who is serving a life sentence in prison. Tasha hoped having her brother talk to Mister about making better decisions as an adult would help him.

“It definitely made an impact on me. . . . I don’t want to have my kids go through the things that I went through,” Mister Jones said.

The family was constantly on the go, finding shelter where it could, often with relatives, from Nebraska to Illinois, New Mexico to Arizona, and points in between. Tasha Jones moved her family to Colorado roughly five years ago and by her account, life began spiraling out of control about a year later, after the death of her father and her husband leaving her. Worried about her ability to care for kids, she sought help.

She found Brian Kula, who first met Mister Jones when the young running back was an eighth-grader playing on a Littleton “feeder” team. Kula, who coached football and track at Littleton, spent extra time training Jones, and got to know him, and how difficult his home life had become.

“He was one of those kids that I attached to quickly,” said Kula, who this past summer took an assistant football coaching job at Valor Christian. “And I could tell he had some needs.”

After days of prayer and what he calls a strong sense of “Christian duty,” Brian Kula and his wife and two children opened their home to Mister Jones, then a freshman at Littleton High School.

Jones estimates he spends about 11 months of the year staying with the Kulas, and the rest of the time with his mother and younger brother, who live in Englewood. His three sisters live with their grandmother in Denver.

“He’s a kid that has a huge heart for other kids,” Kula said. “Mister has a heart for the Lord. He’s a teenager like everyone else that makes mistakes, but he’s the kind of kid that is very loving.”

Mister loves his second family, and he understands why his mother wanted it to be this way.

“To me, it’s a good experience knowing I got a family that is going to support me in any way and that just tells me to think about how I should be living,” Jones said.

Dreaming of Ralphie

Wherever Ben Hranchak goes on the football field, Mister Jones follows. The reason you’ve probably never heard of Hranchak is because he toils quietly as the Lions’ fullback.

But when a running play comes in, Hranchak reminds Jones to stay right on his back.

“It’s really nice to know you have a back right behind you that’s running his (backside) off,” Hranchak said.

Jones can run the 100-meter dash in 11 seconds flat. He added muscle and bulk through a summer of weight lifting, but he has not lost his acceleration. He has shown the speed to avoid tacklers and explode around the edge, but he has the size to run between the tackles.

“He’s a pretty competitive kid and he wants to play at a high level,” Lions coach Chad Koepke said.

Jones said Colorado is a “dream school” for him. He said he got a kick out of Colorado’s upset last week of Kansas last Saturday, considering a Jayhawks’ coach told him before the game he was about to see why Kansas would be a better choice.

He envisions playing running back for the Buffs and breaking off the kind of long runs that brings fans to their feet.

“It brings a lot of excitement when you get the big runs,” he said.

There’s definitely something special about this kid. You, however, can call him Mister.

High-five for Colorado high school stars

A look at the top five in-state prep recruits according to Rivals.com:

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